The Fortress in Orion (11 page)

“Any armaments?”

“Just the usual,” came the answer. “It's not really equipped for battle.”

“That'll do,” replied Pretorius. “We don't want to get into a shooting match with Michkag's fleet.”

Circe was the next to arrive, ordering her vehicle to use its extensions and deposit all the food and medicines she'd purchased into the ship's hold.

“Seems a waste, since we're just going to be moving it again,” she said. “But the alternative was to order the vehicle to remain here, and that would attract too much attention.”

Pandora arrived an hour later. When Snake didn't show up, they ate dinner without her. After another few hours, Pretorius got to his feet.

“She must have been caught,” he said. “I'd better check the local jails and see if I can buy her out or if we'll have to break her out.”

“Don't bother,” said Circe.

He turned to her. “Why not?”

“She's on her way.”

“You're sure?”

Circe nodded. “And she's furious as hell. I could read
that
emotion from miles away.”

“But she's all right?”

“I don't detect any pain, just anger.”

Pretorius opened the hatch, they waited another two minutes, and finally Snake climbed up the stairs, a bag over her shoulder.

“You okay?” asked Pretorius.

“There's a department store I want to blow up!” she snapped.

“What happened?”

“I figured they were taking in more than any other store in the area, so I stayed in the restroom until closing, then cracked the lock on their business office, jimmied the safe, and pulled out wads of cash—Coalition cash.”

“So why are you so late and so mad?”

“I was just about to leave when four employees unlocked the door, pulled up chairs around the desk, and began playing cards. I knew if they saw me they'd report it, and there was no way I could make it back to the ship, so I hid. They couldn't have bet the equivalent of fifty credits between them, but they acted like guilty kids getting away with something because no one knew they were there. I was hiding in a fucking file drawer for five fucking hours until they left!”

“Damned good thing you're a contortionist,” said Ortega.

“Well, I am one very pissed-off contortionist, let me tell you!”

“How much did you come away with?” asked Pandora.

“How the hell should I know? I had to hide before I could count it.”

“Felix,” said Pretorius, pointing to the sack, “do the honors.”

Ortega knelt down and reached into it. “There's a
lot
here,” he said. “Hope it's not all low denomination.”

It wasn't. When they were through counting and recounting, Pretorius got to his feet.

“Okay, grab your gear and let's go steal a ship. We've got to be off the planet before that store opens up in the morning, because there's no way the authorities'll let anything take off once they find out that we robbed them of the equivalent of seven million credits.”

“I should have swiped another million for my trouble,” muttered Snake.

12

“So what's our name?” asked Snake as they took off in the new ship.

“It translates as
Victor
,” replied Pandora, “which is an odd name for a ship with so few armaments.”

“What race does it belong to?”

“Us, now,” said Pretorius.

“I mean, who built it?” said Snake.

“A race that called itself the Dreen,” said Pandora.

“Called itself?”

“They've been extinct for about twenty years, according to my computer,” answered Pandora. “Evidently the Kabori pacified them a little too vigorously.”

Djibmet looked upset but said nothing.

“So who was the most recent owner?”

“A Torqual,” said Pretorius. He shook his head in wonderment. “Must have spent every voyage bent damned near in half.” He tapped the hull above him. “It feels kind of cramped to me, and I never saw a Torqual less than maybe nine feet tall.” He turned to Pandora. “Have you checked out the IDs and passports?”

She nodded. “Three are good. I destroyed the other two.”

“How can they be good?” demanded Ortega. “They didn't belong to Men.”

“Let me correct that,” said Pandora. “They'll be good when I'm done with them—and they'll let me make three more, which will cover the five Men and Proto. Djibmet's got his own, which is still valid. And if our Michkag needs one, then we're on the wrong mission.”

“Sounds good,” said Pretorius. “How long will you need on them?”

“Creating them will take maybe an hour apiece. The trick is creating three more identities that won't set off any alarms. That'll be maybe a day if we're lucky, two or three if we're not.”

He nodded. “Okay. Circe, you and Felix can start monitoring any news items within, say, a hundred light-years. We need to know if there's any change in the political situation. And we especially need to know if anyone thinks stealing the ship was anything more than a simple act of theft.”

“We might even find out if they've stumbled on the pirates yet,” said Ortega.

“Makes no difference,” replied Pretorius. “They don't know anything about us, we took anything that could possibly be identified out of the ship, and we're well clear of No Man's Land.”

“Okay, that's what they're doing,” said Snake. “What do you want
me
to do?”

“I think our next port of call will be Brastos III,” answered Pretorius. “It's a small mining world, oxygen atmosphere, seems well out of things. We'll stop there, ostensibly to refuel, but actually to see if the real Michkag has left for Petrus yet, and if we're real lucky to pick up a humanoid military uniform or two. Even if it doesn't bear any fruit, we still don't want to get to Petrus too soon. We might be able to hide there for a few days. I wouldn't want to try it for, say, two weeks.”

“So what do
I
do?” persisted Snake.

“Open an account at the biggest bank on Brastos III and transfer about a third of your loot there.”

She frowned. “Why? The only thing you're going to spend money on is fuel, if we even need any.”

“Some of you will pick up information in the local bars or drug dens or”—he glanced at Ortega's head—“barber shops, always assuming they'll work on a Man. But I have a feeling a bank officer might be better wired into a government that's still a thousand light-years from here, and the easiest way to find out is to have a chat with him or her or it. And the easiest way to do that is to deposit a million credits or the equivalent now, and then visit the bank to see if we want to deposit any more.”

Snake stared at him. “Damn! You're even more devious as I am!”

He smiled. “I have to be. I can't hide in a file drawer for five hours.”

“All right,” she said, heading off to another workstation. Suddenly she stopped and turned back. “How about half a million, just in case?”

“A million.”

“But—”

“Snake, if we need more, we'll get it,” said Pretorius. “Stealing money is easy. Winning wars is difficult.”

She seemed about to argue, decided that it wouldn't do any good, shrugged, and went to the station.

“Is there anything I should be doing?” asked Proto.

“I was just coming to that,” answered Pretorius. He turned to Djibmet. “We are going to need your expertise here.”

“What do you want me to do?” asked the Kabori.

“Just watch.” Pretorius turned back to Proto. “I want you to appear as a Kabori. Not Michkag and not Djibmet. If you've seen one in a military uniform, so much the better, but we can always bring up holos of that later.”

“All right,” said Proto. “When?”

“Now.”

And as quickly as Pretorius uttered the word, Proto seemed to vanish, to be replaced by a Kabori soldier.

Pretorius turned to Djibmet. “Well?”

“The uniform was out of date even when I was still in the Coalition,” answered the Kabori, “but physically he almost looks the part.”

“Almost?”

“His eyes are brown. Ours are black.”

No sooner had he voiced the observation than Proto's eyes became black.

“The right number of digits on his hands, and his feet are covered by boots,” said Djibmet. “The ears are moving correctly. Walk toward me.”

Proto approached him.

“Yes,” said Djibmet. “Quite good.”

“If you saw him right now for the first time, would you have any suspicion at all that he wasn't a Kabori?” asked Pretorius.

“No, none.”

“All right. Your job for the next three days, when you're not working with Michkag, is to teach him a few simple sentences in your language, especially anything he might need at customs or if he's being questioned by the military.”

“I'm not very good at languages,” said Proto, who was once again in his familiar human guise.

“How are you at dying?” asked Pretorius.

“I beg your pardon?”

“This isn't a war game,” said Pretorius. “It's the real thing. You'd better be good at one or the other, because I don't think you have a third choice.”

The team kept busy for the next two days, and when Pandora announced that she'd finally created and certified ID chips and passports, Pretorius increased the ship's speed, and a few hours later they landed at a small spaceport on Brastos III, a dull gray world that mined gold, platinum, and a few exotic fissionable materials. Most of the mining was done by machines, and the population of the world was something less than a thousand, most of which lived in its sole Tradertown, which consisted of a hotel, a pair of restaurants, a general store, a bank, and an assay office.

It turned out that the ship really did need fuel, and Pretorius, after deciding that the two Kabori should remain on the ship, left Ortega and Pandora to see to the refueling and pay for it and the landing fees. He had Proto, who'd been working on his language, assume the appearance of a Kabori, though without a military uniform, and had him accompany Pretorius, Snake, and Circe to the bank, which looked solid and unimaginative.

“Snake,” said Pretorius just before they entered, “your only function here is to prove that you started that account and then politely explain that I'm your advisor and I'd like to speak to the president, or some other officer, though I doubt that something this small has more than one or two officers. Circe, just nudge me when you sense that someone's lying.”

She nodded, and they walked into the bank. Like the outside, it was far more functional than eye-pleasing. There was one teller of a race they hadn't seen before. Proto received less attention than the three Men, and Snake asked to see the president. A well-dressed Tretoni female emerged from a back room and studied the four of them with narrow reptilian eyes.

“This is my advisor,” said Snake, “and he wishes to discuss doing some business with you.”

The Tretoni turned to Pretorius. “How may I help you?” she said in Terran.

“It's a private matter,” replied Pretorius, “but if we can discuss it in your office, it could prove very lucrative to your bank.”

“Certainly.”

“This is my wife,” he said, indicating Circe, “and this is my partner.” He indicated Proto. “May they join us?”

“But of course,” she replied, leading them to a small office while Snake remained behind. Once there she turned to Proto and said something in Kabori.

He paused for a moment, then responded.

She frowned and said something else.

“She suspects,” whispered Circe. “Let's leave!”

“My partner is still recovering from a brutal incarceration by the Democracy,” said Pretorius promptly. “Please address your questions to me.”

“Your partner has never spoken a word of Kabori in his life,” replied the Tretoni.

Pretorius promptly pulled a small laser pistol out of his pocket and put a hole between her narrow eyes. She fell to the floor without a sound.

“Did you have to kill her?” demanded Circe.

“You don't think she'd have let us walk out of here without sounding an alarm, do you?” He turned to Proto. “You flunked your first test. You'd better not flunk another. Now give me a hand stuffing her body in that closet.”

Once the corpse was hidden Pretorius considered his options for a moment. “She spoke Terran to us, didn't she?”

“Yes,” said Circe.

“All right,” he said. “Proto, take her shape. You'll walk Circe and I back to the front of the bank, where we'll join Snake.”

“What about—?” began Proto.

“I'm not done yet,” continued Pretorius. “You'll explain that our Kabori companion is actually a Coalition auditor and will be in your office for the next few hours, and is not to be disturbed. Then Circe will offer to show you our ship and perhaps give you a keepsake for your kindness, since you can't return to your office anyway, and we'll all leave together. And with any luck, we'll be off the planet before anyone goes looking into the office.”

“It's worth a try,” agreed Proto.

“What about the security cameras?”

He shook his head. “No sense trying to destroy them now. Not only will the tellers start screaming for the authorities, but they already captured our images coming in, and we haven't got time to find out where they transmitted them to.” He paused. “I wish we had time to pin the killing on a teller. The cops might just do it anyway, since nothing was stolen. Anyway, there's nothing we can do about it now.”

They went out to the main area of the bank, Proto mimicked the Tretoni's voice and speech patterns, not perfectly but well enough not to arouse any suspicions on the part of the tellers, and a moment later they were on their way back to the ship.